In recent years, the consideration of visual and material sources has greatly enriched the study of a wide range of scientific practices in the early modern period. As scholars have moved away from characterizing “art” and “science” as discrete categories, they have increasingly turned to paintings, prints, and other forms of artistic production as a means to explore how early modern actors came to understand their experiences of the natural world. While the vast majority of these studies focus on the visual and material culture of Protestant Northern Europe, a small but growing number investigate similar trends in Spain and the Spanish Americas. Yet even as scholars have turned to instances where visual thinking formed a central component of scientific practices in this region, they have been more tentative to consider how religion, and particularly Catholicism, shaped such practices in this context.

This session seeks papers that consider the intersections of visual production, scientific thinking, and religion in the early modern Iberian world, investigating such themes as:

• Material culture, techne, and artisanal epistemologies

• The mobilization of indigenous American and creole systems of natural knowledge

The vitality and inventiveness of artists in eighteenth-century New Spain (Mexico) is the focus of Pinxit Mexici, an exhibition which presents some 110 works of art (primarily paintings), many of which are unpublished and newly restored. The exhibition surveys the most important artists and stylistic developments of the period and highlights the emergence of new pictorial genres and subjects. It is the first major exhibition devoted to this neglected topic.

The exhibition is divided in thematic sections: Great Masters; Masters Storytellers and the Art of Expression; Noble Pursuits and the Academy; Paintings of the Land; The Power of Portraiture; The Allegorical World; Imagining the Sacred.

This exhibition features a selection of outstanding Spanish Old Master paintings by such artists as Juan de Juanes, Juan Bautista Maíno, Juan van der Hamen, Francisco Bayeu and others. Acquired by The Auckland Project through Sotheby’s, these works will feature in the collection of the Spanish Gallery in Bishop Auckland, North East England, due to open in 2019. The Gallery forms part of an inspiring initiative to create a world-class visitor destination and revitalise this former industrial town through employment, training and educational opportunities.

In collaboration with the Meadows Museum, Dallas, Texas, and The Auckland Project, County Durham, England, The Frick Collection is organising an exhibition of Jacob and His Twelve Sons, an ambitious series of thirteen paintings that depict life-size figures from the Old Testament. On loan from Auckland Castle, the works by the Spanish Golden Age master Francisco de Zurbarán (1598–1664) have never before traveled to the United States. Now on view in Dallas through January 7, 2018, Jacob and His Twelve Sons will be shown at The Frick Collection from January 31 through April 22, 2018. In preparation for this unprecedented American tour, these important seventeenth-century Spanish paintings, dating from the 1640s, have undergone a year-long in-depth technical analysis in the conservation department at the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, the most extensive study of the series to date. For its New York showing in 2018, the exhibition will be coordinated by The Frick Collection’s Senior Curator, Susan Grace Galassi.

This exhibition features a selection of outstanding Spanish Old Master paintings by such artists as Juan de Juanes, Juan Bautista Maíno, Juan van der Hamen, Francisco Bayeu and others. Acquired by The Auckland Project through Sotheby’s, these works will feature in the collection of the Spanish Gallery in Bishop Auckland, North East England, due to open in 2019. The Gallery forms part of an inspiring initiative to create a world-class visitor destination and revitalise this former industrial town through employment, training and educational opportunities.

Until February 11, the Frick Collection in New York is celebrating Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, one of the outstanding painters of the Spanish Golden Age, who will turn 400 years old on 31 December. Well known for his religious paintings and his extraordinary depictions of street urchins, he was also an ingenious painter of portraits. This genre remains, however, the least studied aspect of his work. Inspired by the self-portraits in their holdings, New York’s Frick Collection and London’s National Gallery have co-organized a show which will move to London from February 28 through May 21, 2018.

As widely reported by the media, including the Guardian, an exceptional self-portrait by Murillo just discovered at Penrhyn Castle in Wales has been added to the show on account of its exceptionality.

Until February 11, the Frick Collection in New York is celebrating Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, one of the outstanding painters of the Spanish Golden Age, who will turn 400 years old on 31 December. Well known for his religious paintings and his extraordinary depictions of street urchins, he was also an ingenious painter of portraits. This genre remains, however, the least studied aspect of his work. Inspired by the self-portraits in their holdings, New York’s Frick Collection and London’s National Gallery have co-organized a show which will move to London from February 28 through May 21, 2018.

As widely reported by the media, including the Guardian, an exceptional self-portrait by Murillo just discovered at Penrhyn Castle in Wales has been added to the show on account of its exceptionality.